Stat: $1.6 trillion: The amount that Americans collectively owe in student loan debt. Story: In the United States, getting a college degree is often seen as a pathway to a prosperous future. But since ...

It’s a truism that demography is destiny—and that includes the financial destiny of states. Although the population of the 50 states grew at its fastest rate in nearly a quarter of a century last year ...

For the past two years, state and local governments have been a major force in the job market, hiring new employees at a pace not seen in decades and helping drive the nation’s overall employment ...

To effectively identify and reduce the spread of communicable diseases and other health threats, public health departments need timely standardized data from doctors, hospitals, and other health care ...

Protecting ocean health while supporting sustainable fisheries is hard work, and it takes time. But those dual goals are also urgent. So 10 years after the formation of the North Pacific Fisheries ...

Businesses, communities, and wildlife across a vast portion of western Washington, western Oregon, and northwestern California rely on healthy national forests. Since 1994, the Northwest Forest Plan ...

Despite the strong bipartisan action the Arizona Legislature took last year to allow more homebuilding, the state’s housing shortage — and high costs for renters and homebuyers — persists. The ...

Housing costs rise when there are not enough homes to meet demand. Pennsylvania, in part because of restrictive zoning regulations, ranked 44th among the 50 states on rate of housing built from 2017 ...

Increasing broadband deployment has been a critical component of the United States’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic and a central aspect of the recent wave of funding aimed at modernizing the ...

Over the course of a lifetime, the family provides a foundation for financial security. Children’s economic well-being is closely tied to their immediate families’ financial success, and as kids grow ...

Retirement savings plans such as 401(k)s usually place the responsibility for selecting and managing investments with individual workers. These choices can feel overwhelming for many employees, who ...